Clint Eastwood as Tokyo Rose?

(Photo Warner Bros.)

Clint Eastwood, formerly a Hollywood favorite among American patriots, is taking some heat for fictionalizing scenes in his latest movie "Letters From Iwo Jima" – scenes that made the Japanese soldiers look more humane than their American GI counterparts.

While the movie is getting rave reviews from most movie critics, the liberties Eastwood took with the facts is causing a stir with some former fans of the one-time flag-waving action hero.

Perhaps the sharpest criticism has come from nationally syndicated talk-radio host Michael Savage, who compared the director unfavorably to Tokyo Rose, the World War II-era Japanese radio propagandist.

"The astonishing transformation of Clint Eastwood, from his 'Dirty Harry' days, cannot be more forcefully understood than by appreciating the level to which he has gone in order to appease the liberal gods of Hollywood," said Savage. "Tokyo Rose would be more of an American patriot than Clint Eastwood in his new propaganda flick. Almost all of the Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima were shown as courageous, long-suffering, loyal, kindly men dragged into the war against their wishes. Revisionist historians should watch this film simply to learn new techniques."

Savage zeroed in on one of two fictionalized scenes in the movie.

"In one astonishing scene, old Clint has the audacity to show besieged Japanese troops, treating an American prisoner with compassion, giving him their last morphine injections!" he said. "The reality, of course, of Japanese soldiers during World War II, was one of utmost brutality. I kept wanting to scream out, 'Remember the Bataan Death March!' or 'Why don’t you show flashbacks to human experiments on prisoners in Manchuria by the Japanese?' Or, 'Hasn’t Eastwood read the 'Rape of Nan King'?"

In fact, while most of the movie is taken from accounts in letters written by Japanese soldiers, this scene was made up. In addition, in another scene, a Japanese deserter surrenders to the Americans, who shoot the prisoner.

"Eastwood's descent into liberal madness, may be a product of too much success for an overly good looking young actor with no formal education to speak of," added Savage. "The years at Pebble Beach have altered an American icon into an unrecognizable Anti-American propagandist."

Meanwhile, Eastwood, once the bane of American film critics, now is the toast of the town in Hollywood. The film is also meeting with critical and popular acclaim in Japan.

MSNBC's critic called the film "remarkable."
The Christian Science Monitor said: "Clint Eastwood's 'Letters From Iwo Jima' is his companion piece to 'Flags of Our Fathers' and in almost every way is superior. That earlier movie had its powerful moments, but it was entangled by its complicated time structure, and its message - that patriotic propaganda is problematic even when fighting a 'just' war - was tangled, too."
The Associated Press said it has Oscar potential.
USA Today gave it a four-star rating on a scale of four, saying: "It takes a filmmaker possessed of a rare, almost alchemic, blend of maturity, wisdom and artistic finesse to create such an intimate, moving and spare war film as Clint Eastwood has done in 'Letters From Iwo Jima.'"

Named best film of 2006 by the National Board of Review, "Letters from Iwo Jima" is the second of two Eastwood films about the 1945 battle, engraved in U.S. memory by a photo of six servicemen raising the flag on the island's Mount Suribachi.

The first, "Flags of Our Fathers," is the tale of three of the Americans who raised the flag and later became propaganda tools in a campaign to sell U.S. war bonds.

The movie stars Ken Watanabe as Lieutenant-General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, commander of the Japanese forces in the epic World War II battle. It focuses on the Japanese defenders. Central to the film are Kuribayashi, who had served as a military attache in the United States, and Saigo, a young baker who is drafted and forced to leave his pregnant wife but vows to return home alive.

Eastwood told reporters he was attempting to convey the shared humanity of those who fought on both sides.

"I think it's important that everybody remember that people gave their lives to protect their country," he said.

Some 6,800 U.S. Marines and 21,000 Japanese were killed in the battle.

It was just three years ago that Eastwood dropped in on Savage's radio show. The call was prompted by Savage's suggestion people might be ignoring Eastwood's film "Mystic River" because it featured two of Hollywood's most outspoken critics of the U.S. and its policies, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins.

Previous stories: